Category Archives: Libya

Though many would still deny this reality, Islamic Jihadists are at war with America.

They are not homogenous and certainly not united, but Jihadists from groups we know by name (Al Qaeda, the Islamic State) and some from groups whose names are not commonly known are at war with us–whether we want to be in a war with them or not.

One time and place in which our Jihadist enemies launched an act of war against the United States occurred on 11 September 2012 in Benghazi, Libya.

In that action 4 Americans were killed, including a US ambassador and two brave military contractors. 10 more Americans were wounded.

Let’s examine the salient facts of this attack:

It was carried out by a group called Ansar al-Sharia, a Jihadist organization based in Libya made up of Libyan jihadists.

The attack(s) occurred at two places in Benghazi, Libya.

Obviously, the proper response to this act of war would have been to seek out, close with and destroy the members of Ansar al-Shariah, wherever they are. If any of the Jihadists survived the operation they should have been taken prisoner as irregular enemy combatants and treated as such.

Unfortunately, this is not the way that the Obama administration decided to handle the situation.

In 2014, the US military, following Obama’s policies, captured the reported ringleader of the Benghazi attacks, Ahmed Abu Khattala in an operation IN LIBYA.

He was brought to the US and charged with some 18 crimes, including murder.

Note that he wasn’t charged with a war crime, he was simply charged with murder, the same way a gangbanger from a bad neighborhood in any US city would be after a drive-by shooting.

We have now seen the outcome of this insane policy of fighting a war with lawyers:

Yesterday, a jury in Washington acquitted Khattala of 14 of the 18 charges he faced after deliberating for 5 days following a 7 week trial.

Khattala was convicted on 4 charges including conspiracy to provide material support for terrorism, maliciously destroying and injuring dwellings and property as well as using and carrying a semi-automatic weapon during a crime of violence.

Fortunately, Khattala still faces up to 60 years in prison, but the fact that he was acquitted of the most serious charges against him illustrates the dangerous folly of confronting an enemy who is fighting a war against us this way.

It is one thing to apprehend a Jihadi in the United States after he carries out an attack here and trying him in our courts, especially if he is a US citizen.

It is quite another to go capture a foreign terrorist in a foreign country after he attacked the US in that foreign country and then bring him back stateside to face a jury trial.

What all this indicates is that the global Jihadist movement is getting stronger and spreading its violent attacks to more areas of the world, giving them more training areas, launching pads and recruiting fodder with which to wage war against America and the West.

Jaws was a blockbuster hit in 1975 based on the best-selling novel by the late Peter Benchley.

The storyline is about a Great White shark that stakes out its territory off the coast of a New England resort town named Amity. Bathers and swimmers start getting attacked and eaten right as the 4th of July tourist bonanza begins.

The Chief of Police and a marine biologist try to convince the Mayor of Amity to close the beaches until the shark can be killed. The mayor ignores their warnings and, sure enough, more people die as a result.

The Mayor refuses to recognize the threat and treats his police chief and the marine biologist as if they were crazy for even suggesting that he close the beaches. His myopia results in dead voters.

There is a lesson here relating to today’s threat from Islam, both in the form of civilizational Jihad and violent Jihad.

In this analogy, the criminally myopic and irresponsible Mayor of Amity is represented by elected and appointed officials in the West who either refuse to recognize the existential threat to Western civilization posed by Jihad or recognize the threat, but deny it publicly.

We’re not just talking about President Obama here, though he certainly personifies the West’s inadequate response to Jihad. It is now abundantly clear that Obama’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood run broad and deep.

Obama’s infamous speech in Cairo in 2009, with Muslim Brotherhood members in the front row

But Obama isn’t the only one to blame. He is essentially implementing the policies he always said he would implement. The people who voted for an support Obama are to blame.

But not just the voters are to blame.

Take Secretary of State John Kerry, for example. He is responsible for the mythology that Jihad is founded in poverty, despite there being no evidence to back up this supposition. To make matters worse, he is leading the charge to strike a horrible bargain that will guarantee that the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, achieves its goal of becoming a nuclear power.

From this point forward, let John Kerry be forever known as the father of the Iranian Bomb.

The Expectant Father of the Iranian Atomic Bomb

Kerry’s predecessor, Hillary Clinton, is also a villain. Hillary and Bill’s close and extensive financial ties to the Saudis, Qataris and other nefarious Gulf interests are enough to make even the Bush family green with envy.

Then there is the soon-to-be departed attorney general Eric Holder, who refused to even utter the euphemism “radical Islam” under congressional questioning and then shut down the follow-on to the Holy Land Foundation prosecution, letting Muslim Brotherhood fronts such as CAIR and ISNA, who were named unindicted co-conspirators in that terrorism case, off scot-free. Holder may be the worst villain of all and should be pursued for prosecution on a variety of charges for malfeasance during his long tenure at the helm of Justice.

Running interference for the Muslim Brotherhood

But there are plenty of Republicans to blame, who sat by and let all this happen, with scarcely a word of protest.

There’s John McCain, who cooperated with Obama in setting the stage for Libya to descend into chaos, opening an opportunity for Jihadists and then repeated the same mistake in Syria.

John Boehner is a villain as well, because he rolled over for Obama repeatedly, then teamed with Marco Rubio and the aforementioned McCain in criticizing members of their own Republican caucus who questioned Hillary Clinton consort Huma Mahmood Abedin’s longstanding and proven ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Boehner: An Enabler of Obama’s Policies

All of these people personify the Mayor of Amity from Jaws. They all want the rest of us to believe that the shark isn’t out there, or that it isn’t dangerous. They have differing motivations, but the result is the same: the West is vulnerable and under assault.

The Islamic State is not simply an Iraqi problem or a Syrian problem. IS has metastasized into a worldwide organization with 20,000 recruits from Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, the U.S., Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Germany. Even worse, Jihadists from Boko Haram in Nigeria, Abu Sayyef in the Philippines, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Northwest Africa and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from Yemen have all pledged allegiance to IS.

There can no longer be any doubt that the global Islamic insurgency that some have been warning about for some time, amounts to a world war. Nevertheless, policymakers here in the U.S. continue to ignore or deny this reality.

Over the period of a generation, the West has allowed itself to be thoroughly infiltrated by a savage and barbaric belief system. This is evidenced by the global base of recruitment that the Islamic State has been able to take advantage of and the numerous public displays of support for IS in the West.

There was good news and bad news on the front against Jihad in Africa this Christmas.

The good news was that there were no reported attacks on Christians in Nigeria by Boko Haram, something that has happened in the past few years on Christmas Day, as well as just about every other significant day on the Christian religious calendar.

The bad news is that there were attacks on churches in Kenya. These attacks seem to have been on the order of mob violence, rather than organized terrorist attacks, but they were still an act of Jihad.

More bad news: the Reuters news agency, whose parent company has extensive ties to Shariah-compliant finance, filed a terribly researched and misleading report on these attacks which can be found on India’s First Post news site.

It is no mere coincidence that Jihad has erupted across the African continent in recent years. We have seen active Jihadi violence in Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Ghana, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, South Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and the Central African Republic. If you subscribe to the so-called “mainstream” media for an explanation for this phenomenon, you’d believe that it was caused by “sectarian tensions,” poverty, or general lawlessness.

These explanations are balderdash. Africans of various ethnicities, faiths, tribal origins and nationalities have lived in close proximity to each other for centuries. Unlike past violence, the recent wave of Jihadi violence has two common threads: Islam and Jihad. Past violence may have been due to local differences, but Boko Haram operating in Nigeria and Cameroon, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb operating in Mali and Niger, and Al Shabaab operating in Somalia and Kenya all have the same doctrinal basis for their violent campaigns: Islam.

We can deny it all we want, but it doesn’t make it untrue.

With regard to the Christmas Day attacks in Kenya, “youths,” (codespeak in mainstream media like Reuters for young Jihadis) threw Molotov cocktails at Christian churches:

Youths threw petrol bombs at two Kenyan churches on Christmas day, police said on Thursday, in the latest bout of violence against Christians on the country’s predominantly Muslim coast. Police and witnesses said the churches on the edge of port city of Mombasa were attacked in the early hours of December 25 after churchgoers held services to usher in Christmas. Police had no suspects but were exploring the possibility that the attacks may have been launched by Muslim militants…

Now, here’s a significant clue as to the actual origin of this violence:

Police said Muslim youths believed to be controlled by radical preachers with links to Somali militant group al Shabaab might be behind the attacks, which left one church completely destroyed.

For years we have been hearing over and over again that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, yet for years and years we see reports of Muslim Imams and clerics admonishing Muslims to commit violence. We have seen it around the world: from Anwar al-Awlaki in San Diego, Denver and Northern Virginia; from the Blind Sheikh in Egypt and then Brooklyn, New York; from Anjem Choudary in the UK; from Sheikh Yussef al Qaradawi in Egypt and Qatar; from Hezbollah cleric Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon; from Mufti Taqi Usmani in Pakistan; from a host of Saudi clerics and, last but certainly not least, from the Ayatollahs who rule the Islamic Republic of Iran.

How do you suppose that ideological supporters of Al Shabaab came to be clerics in mosques in Kenya? It doesn’t just happen by osmosis. It happens through dawa operations (missionary work) funded by petrowealth in nations such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Mosques have to be built and funded. Clerics and Imams have to be paid. The money doesn’t grow on trees in the African bush.

Now we get to the typical Reuters apologetics for Islamic jihad–the part where Reuters blames the Christian victims of Jihadi violence for being attacked:

Many Muslims on the Indian Ocean coastline feel marginalised by Kenya’s predominantly Christian government and the historically cordial relations between the two communities have suffered strains in recent years.

“The churches are located in an area mainly inhabited by Muslims, and church members had reported threats before from some youth who told them to close the churches down,” said Robert Mureithi, the Likoni area police chief.

Clearly this is Reuters’ pathetic attempt at “balance.” The inference here is that the churches were attacked because the Muslim community has been mistreated in some way by the Kenyan government. Oh, and the churches were in a predominantly Muslim area, and we all know that having a Christian church in a predominantly Muslim area is “provocative.” One wonders whether these churches will be rebuilt, or will the congregations decide to worship elsewhere? Because that is exactly what the Jihadists want. They want to impose Shariah, first locally, then nationally, then regionally and eventually globally.

Under Shariah, it is forbidden to make repairs or improvements to Christian churches. The Jihadis will see to it that Shariah is enforced one way or another. We should not at all be surprised if the churches are not rebuilt, if attacks on churches continue and if eventually churches and Christians disappear from these areas altogether.

Today it is the coast of Kenya, the nation that saw the horrific Jihadi attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi not terribly long ago. But it most certainly will not end in Kenya.

The terror alerts issued by the US State Department, Interpol and the foreign offices of Great Britain, France and Germany should worry Westerners very much.

US embassy in Sanaa, Yemen

If there is indeed specific information about a credible threat that closed down US embassies in 22 nations, grounded 6 international airline flights (so far) and resulted in the most serious global travel advisory put out by the US State Department in several years (covering an entire month) then it is an indication that Al Qaeda is not only NOT “on the run,” but is evidently more prolific than ever in terms of its reach.

Under such circumstances, it’s not a question of “if” Western targets will be struck again, but “when.”

We have been lied to about the magnitude and scope of the Jihadist terrorist threat. That is the unmistakable conclusion.

Some cynics and skeptics seem to think that the whole issue has been contrived by the Obama administration for political purposes, but this makes no sense at all.

Obama has repeatedly declared victory over Al Qaeda. He essentially declared that the killing of Osama Bin Laden placed the terrorist organization on the ropes and all but announced an end to the war on terror, complete with a re-orientation of the US military toward a significantly smaller force primarily focused on the Asia-Pacific region.

Moreover, his policy of drone strikes was supposed to have decimated Al Qaeda’s leadership structure.

Apparently none of what Obama told us was correct.

So for Obama now to use that same terrorist threat to improve his political fortunes makes no sense at all.

Think about it: So when Obama repeatedly says Al Qaeda is on the run and for all practical purposes defeated—-it’s regarded as propaganda for the masses. And then when the State Dept issues a global travel advisory and closes 22 embassies because of a threat from Al Qaeda, that’s also propaganda for those same masses?

It doesn’t add up. I think Obama lied about Al Qaeda in the first place. It was in his best interests to remove a major national security threat from the public sphere and, with the aid of a compliant media, he successfully did so. But it was never anything more than words on paper and talk in pretty speeches.

Al Qaeda isn’t on the run. They aren’t defeated. And this terror alert, unfortunately, isn’t phony.

The alert coincides with the end of Ramadan, a holy month in Islam in which America has often restrained itself in fighting Islamic enemies, but during which Jihadists have actually escalated their attacks. The closure of the embassies comes on the Ramadan “Night of Power.” Without getting into obnoxious detail about Islamic doctrine, all you really need to know about the “Night of Power” is that it was the day on which the USS Cole was attacked in Aden harbor in Yemen in 2000. And this is the same week during which the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in east Africa were bombed back in 1998.

So, when intelligence emerges suggesting that US targets will come under attack at this time, it is something to take seriously, especially given the fact that Al Qaeda leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri released a statement in the past week instructing Al Qaeda’s followers to attack US targets now.

Perhaps the most significant evidence that this terror alert should be taken seriously comes from the fact that France, Germany and Great Britain have all shut their embassies in Yemen down as well and issued travel advisories to their citizens. Unless they’re in on some scheme to help Obama’s approval rating, my guess is there is a real threat out there.

German diplomatic post in Yemen

Al Qaeda is real, folks. They’ve been real for decades now and they’re deadly. To assume otherwise is suicidal. To make matters worse, there is evidence to indicate that they are now as capable as they have been at any time since 1998.

Consider the fact that in the past month there have been large-scale prison breakouts in nine Islamic nations, including Iraq, Libya, Pakistan and Yemen. The timing and scale of these breakouts in which mostly Jihadi fighters made their escapes, is unprecedented. Interpol suspects Al Qaeda involvement and coordination and has issued an advisory to that effect. On 22 July, 500 Jihadis, including senior level Al Qaeda operatives, escaped from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Five days later, on 27 July, 1100 inmates escaped from a prison near Benghazi, Libya. And four days after that, on 31 July, the Taliban led a breakout from a prison in Pakistan in which an unknown number of Jihadis escaped.

Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq

These operations were almost certainly orchestrated and coordinated, most probably with help from the inside in each country. This was a massive undertaking that demonstrates Al Qaeda’s military as well as political power in the Islamic world. With so many Jihadis back on the loose, Westerners better brace themselves.

Despite the fact that Al Qaeda is conducting active operations around the world, including recent operations in which Americans were killed in Libya and Algeria, President Obama continues to spread the myth that Al Qaeda is defeated.

He has, however, changed his tune a little bit.

Ever since the killing of Osama Bin Laden, Obama has been declaring that Al Qaeda has been defeated or is “on the run.”

Now he qualifies his statement: he now says that the “core” of Al Qaeda is “on the path to defeat,” what ever that means.

Actually, it means nothing. It is meaningless political babble.

Judging from the article linked below, Obama seems to think that if the US withdraws from combat with the Jihadists, the war will be over. This attitude isn’t just naive, it’s downright dishonest and dangerously irresponsible…

President Obama has selected one of the worst possible candidates imaginable to become Secretary of Defense. Chuck Hagel has a history of being weak on Jihad and terrorism, the greatest threat to American lives and national security today.

Hagel’s nomination should become a “teaching moment.” Just because someone served honorably in the uniform of the United States military or has an “R” instead of a “D” after his name, does not automatically mean that the person is strong on national security policy.

Chuck Hagel is as bad on the threat of Jihadist terrorism as anyone in America. Not only has he been on the wrong side of votes on the issue, but his votes demonstrate a lack of commitment on the issue, as well a tendency to enable Jihad:

• Wrong on Iraq

A graphic depiction of the impact of the surge on Al Qaeda in Iraq

Initially, then-Senator Hagel voted in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom to overthrow Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. But when the insurgency did not go so well, Hagel flip-flopped and called for a withdrawal of US troops in just 120 days back in 2007.

Had such a policy been implemented, Al Qaeda and other Jihadist elements would have emerged victorious in Iraq and the US would have been seen as clearly losing Iraq to Al Qaeda. This would have energized Al Qaeda and given it the biggest recruiting boost since the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States homeland. This would have essentially allowed the global jihad to morph at an accelerated rate.

Then, when the US announced the surge counteroffensive in Iraq, Senator Hagel said it would be “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it’s carried out.”

Hagel is clearly no military strategist. The surge broke the back of the insurgency, drastically reduced the violence in Iraq and allowed the US to draw down its force levels in a secure manner.

To be sure, Iraq is no utopia today, but violence levels there are no where near what they were during the insurgency and, most importantly, Al Qaeda was denied victory in Iraq due to the surge.

Wrong on Hezbollah

In 2006 Hagel was one of a just 11 senators who refused to sign a letter urging the European Union to designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Hezbollah not only killed 241 Marines, soldiers and sailors in Beirut, Lebanon on 23 October 1983, they also kidnapped and murdered US Marine Colonel William Higgins in 1988 when he was on UN Peacekeeping duty. More recently, Hezbollah was active in fighting US GIs in Iraq and Hezbollah members captured, tortured and killed US GIs in Iraq.

Colonel William “Rich” Higgins, USMC–Kidnapped and murdered by Hezbollah in 1988.

Ali Mussa Daqduq: Hezbollah leader captured in Iraq in 2007. He planned a raid in which 4 US soldiers were captured, subsequently tortured and killed in Karbala, Iraq. He was captured by US Special Operations Forces, but was released from custody when President Obama refused to have him remanded to the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Wrong on Iran

Iranian “art” in Tehran

Chuck Hagel has a shamefully weak record on Iran, the world’s foremost state sponsor of Jihadist terrorism and a serial proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles.

His weakness on Iran goes way back to August of 2001 when he was one of just two US Senators to vote against renewal of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. The Iran-Libya Sanctions Act was set up to punish entities for investing in Iranian or Libyan petroleum industries, aiming to prevent Tehran or Tripoli from gaining petroleum profits that could be used to develop or acquire weapons of mass destruction or to finance terrorism.

In September 2007, Hagel voted against designating the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist entity. 76 Senators voted for the bill in an overwhelming bipartisan vote.

In July 2008, Hagel voted in the Senate Banking Committee against legislation imposing sanctions on countries conducting certain business with Iran. The legislation passed 19-2.

In October 2008 Hagel single-handedly killed Senator Gordon Smith’s (R-Oregon) S.970 Iran Counter-Proliferation Act, a bill that had 71 co-sponsors, 36 Republican and 35 Democrat. This act would have strengthened the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (now referred to simply as the Iran Sanctions Act).

Chuck Hagel: Wrong for America

Leftist pundits are creating a straw man argument by promoting the meme that only the “Jewish lobby” is opposed to Hagel because of his record of not supporting Israel.

This dishonest tactic is merely meant as a smokescreen to mask Hagel’s shamefully weak, longstanding record on Jihad and terrorism primarily directed against the United States and its citizens.

Call and write your Senator and tell him/her to oppose the nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. America cannot afford to have someone as weak on Jihadist terrorism as Chuck Hagel.

The latest reports now have looted Libyan arms transferred from Al Qaeda elements among the Libyan “rebels” into the hands of Boko Haram Jihadist terrorists, who have been slaughtering Christians in Nigeria for a few years now.

This was an immense failure of the Obama administration. The Libyan “rebels” would never have achieved victory without US and NATO air support. But when reports began to surface that Libyan arms could end up in the hands of terrorists, Obama sat on his hands and didn’t lift a finger.

Rather than perform a legitimate military mission, namely securing Qaddafi’s weapons, Obama just kept right on bombing on behalf of Jihadis and let the weapons scatter to the four corners…and the peaceful people of Nigeria are paying the price for Obama’s recalcitrance.

Nigeria, ECOWAS nations plot against Al-Qaeda• As Al-Qaeda spreads across West Africa

As Al-Qaeda’s first cell was dismantled last week in Kano city, Nigeria and other West African nations are now plotting to tame the sect as its presence in other West African nations is recurring in security reports on regular basis.

Investigations by Sunday Tribune showed that West African leaders are now coordinating with their colleagues from the Sahel region on how to combat the spread of Al-Qaeda from the Maghreb to the West African states, especially after the discovery of an alleged collaboration among drug traffickers, kidnappers and some elements of the jihadists movement.

Findings within Nigeria revealed that the arrest of a Mauritanian and four other alleged suspects linked to Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb has removed doubts within intelligence communities about the sect‘s presence in Nigeria independent of the Boko Haram group.

While Southern tip of West Africa has not recorded direct Al-Qaeda attacks, recent reports indicated that jihadists have been infiltrating the West African sub region as early as 2007 when three Mauritanian terrorists who killed a French tourist family fled to Senegal.

In 2009, Ghana authorities were reported to have arrested three al-Qaeda suspects on drug trafficking charges, marking the first time that terrorists were themselves tied to drug operations.

Niger, in 2010, was also reported to have extradited Salafist Taqqi Ould Youssef to Mauritania with Niger’s security agencies believing that Youssef was appointed by Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb [AQIM] to create a cell targeting Western nationals in Northern Niger.

Military and intelligence leaders in the Sahel are reported to be working on a security plan that is way beyond the Joint Military and Intelligence Command involving Mauritanian, Mali, Niger and Algeria which they believe has not totally contained the threats from the sect.

According to a leaked security plan by a Maghreb news organisation, Magharebia, the Sahel countries have a new strategic vision to fight back with a security cordon based on concentric rings that begin in the Maghreb and stretch far afield to West and Central Africa.

Quoting a leaked plan, the news organ reported that Mauritania is going to work on co-coordinating Sahel power with African states on two axes: the field states and those behind them.

The states involved are divided into two with the states on the front lines – Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – expected to work with those further away such as Morocco, Libya and Nigeria.

Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger are listed as existing partners for the Joint Military Staff Committee of the Sahel Region, while Morocco, Libya and Nigeria are reported to have been invited to attend the security sessions.